How To Get More Views On Tiktok Hack

How to Hack the TikTok Algorithm to Get on the For You Page with 5 Content Strategies

We will go over 5 content strategies to hack the TikTok Algorithm to get your videos on the For You page. The For You page is where the trending and popular videos get shown, so being on there is necessary to go viral.

With over 100K Followers and having 5 viral videos that got over 10 million views, we learned what common characteristics make a video perform better than others and what pitfalls to avoid.

Let's first start with a q uick overview of the algorithm, then dive into the "Completion Ratio" of the video, and finally go into the 5 content strategies to improve the ratio. Here is the outline of these sections:

Overview of the Algorithm
Completion Ratio
5 Content Strategies to Improve Completion Ratio

Overview of the Algorithm

TikTok Algorithm — Flowchart of Posting Content

We covered the details of the TikTok algorithm in a previous post:

As a recap (see diagram above), when a video gets posted, it is push to a batch of viewers. After the viewers have seen the video, then it is evaluated on it's "Performance Rating".

"Performance Rating" is made up of 4 measurable metrics (in the order of importance):

Completion Ratio (percentage of the video watched)
Shares
Comments
Likes

If this "Performance Rating" meets a minimum requirement, then the video gets pushed to another batch of viewers, and the process gets repeated.

Completion Ratio

Completion Ration (video's retention rate) is the most important metric in the "Performance Rating". It is the percentage of the video watched, and it is the most heavily weighted factor in determining if the content gets pushed to another batch of viewers.

This is how it is determined: if viewers watched half of the video, the ratio is 50%, and if watched entirely, it will be 100% but could be higher if watched repeatedly. The longer the video is watched, the better this ratio is.

5 Content Strategies to Improve Completion Ratio

The previous section explained the importance of the Completion Ratio in evaluating whether or not a video gets pushed to more viewers. Now, let's go over 5 strategies to improve the Completion Ratio.

1. Video Length Between 10 to 15 Seconds

Shorter length videos increase the chances that viewers will watch them fully and not stop due to a lack of attention span. TikTok is a short-form video platform, and users are accustomed to most videos not being over 15 seconds.

The first 3 seconds are critical to retaining viewer's attention. With the nature of the short-form video, the content has to capture the attention of the viewers immediately. To apply this concept, we asked a question at the beginning, and the viewers will watch it till the end to see the answer. Below is an example of that:

2. Hooks from Trending Popular Sounds

By using popular sounds, the viewers are looking for recognizable hooks or punchlines (like a punchline to a common joke) and will watch it till the end.

Video with popular sounds will be pushed to a larger pool of viewers by the algorithm. In the video below, we used a popular sound and added a unique twist to it.

3. Videos that Loop

If the video is watched repeatedly, then the Completion Ratio will be over 100% and will increase the "Performance Rating" of the video.

A very common practice is to create seamless loops in the video so that viewers are "tricked" into watching it multiple times. In the video below, we did a skit where we created a loop with the script.

4. Captivating Video Captions

It is a very common practice for creators to use intriguing captions to keep their viewer's attention. As annoying as they are sometimes, they are proven to work well.

Here are a few common ones: "Don't let this flop", "Wait till the end", "I got suspended for this", etc. These appeal to our human curiosity and will retain our attention. We pointed out these commons captions in this skit video:

5. Trending Hashtag Challenges

These hashtags challenges are great since viewers are watching to see the creator's creativity and attempt at the challenges. Many viewers are watching it to get ideas to create their own content and will likely watch it multiple times to see how exactly it was done.

The hashtag challenges can be found in the "Discover" tab in TikTok. In the video below, we did the trending "#GenieInABottle" challenge:

Conclusion

Like any game, you have to know the rules of the game to leverage the strategies that increase your odds of winning. With TikTok, you have to retain the user's attention with engaging content. At the end of the day, great content will always win but if you don't prepare it correctly, the odds of people seeing it is lessened.

We can be found on TikTok: @henry_and_emma

Here is a more detailed article on our blog: